A Case for Traditional Songs (Part 1)


by Terry Johnson on April 19, 2005

“The Case for Traditional Songs”

Terry Johnson

You should have a number of sheets in your notebook, the
first being an outline of what I intend to cover, and then some elaboration on
that in the pages that follow.

Let me give you some personal background on this
whole matter of singing the Psalms. Let me take you back to my freshman year at
the University of Southern California. I attended a Bible study that was being
conducted by Marshall Foster. Does that ring any bells with anyone? Marshall
Foster was an associate of Hal Lindsey, and was leading Bible studies on
Fraternity Row at Southern Cal, and I began to attend those; and Marshall then
went on and has written a number of books on God-and-country type themes.
Anyway, he was very charismatic, very outgoing, really a tremendous fellow. And
one day when we were at the Bible study, he told us all to take out our New
American Standard Bibles and turn to Psalm 92, which we did. And we then began
to sing it to the tune, If I Were a Rich Man! And it worked! I still
remember it. [Sings…”It is good to give thanks, and sing praises to the
name of the Lord, O Most High. To declare Thy lovingkindness…” [Laughter]
“…in the morning and by night.” (And then you repeat) “…And with the
ten-stringed lute and with the harp with resounding music on the lyre, for Thou
O God hast made me glad by….” It goes on! It works! [Laughter] And I had
this immediate self-authenticating response! I did! In which I said, “This is
what we’re supposed to do. Maybe not that tune, but what we’re supposed to do is
sing the Psalms.” In my little California way, I thought that was neat — that
here were the Psalms; Psalms are songs; they’re supposed to be sung; we sang a
Psalm. I thought, “This is a great idea! We ought to do this more!”

Well, as it turned out we didn’t do any more of that
at all during those undergraduate years, but then after I graduated I went to
Great Britain and studied at Trinity College in Bristol, and among our
requirements was that we go for one month in the middle of the school year and
participate in internship. So I went to St. David’s Broomhouse in Edinburgh,
Scotland, and the first Sunday that I was there I sat down in a pew, and next to
me was this blue hymnbook (or so I thought), and they started the service. They
told us to take our hymnbooks and to turn to a Psalm. And I opened the thing up,
and there in the beginning of the hymnbook was all 150 Psalms, rhymed and
metered for singing. And I thought, “Oh, my goodness! Where has this thing been
hiding all of my life? Why, this is the most amazing thing, that we have this
resource right here. They’ve been using this in Scotland.” (As I later learned,
they’d been using it since 1650, so it wasn’t like this was a novelty.) But I
thought, “This is the greatest thing in the world! This is what I’ve always
wanted to be able to do, and here it all is!” And I spent a month, then, at St.
David’s singing. Basically, we’d sing three or four Psalms in every service and
we worked our way through a good bit of the Psalter in a matter of morning and
evening worship over the period of a month, singing three or four Psalms in
every service. And I came back from that experience convinced from that point
forward that one way or another I was going to be involved in promoting the
singing of Psalms.

Now, to my surprise, others do not seem to have had
the same kind of self-authenticating experience with the Psalter that I have
had. To me, it’s obvious. To me, it was immediately apparent that this is the
right thing to do. It wasn’t dissimilar from my experience the first time I went
and visited John MacArthur’s church out in the San Fernando Valley. He was
preaching verse by verse through I John, explaining word by word and phrase by
phrase, verse by verse, the meaning of John and making application and
exhortation as he was doing it. I walked out of there saying, “That’s what we’re
supposed to do. That’s the way you’re supposed to teach the Bible. That’s what
preaching is supposed to be. You’re supposed to explain the Bible.”

The same with the Psalms: the Psalms are supposed to
be sung. We’re supposed to sing the Bible. That just seemed obvious to me, and I
just never understood why everyone else just doesn’t jump on that bandwagon! God
wrote the Psalms; they are the Bible’s hymnbook; they were meant to be sung;
they’re available to sing; well, let’s get on with it! What is the hesitation?
Why are you holding back? Why are we not doing this? Why are we not thrilled to
be doing this, and rejoicing that we have these resources available and making
use of them? So that’s always been a little bit confusing to me that that is not
what we’re doing more of, and yet I came back from Great Britain convinced that
that’s something that we needed to do.

The first church I served, I went from cover to
cover through the hymnal and found that it had two Psalms: the obligatory
Twenty-third and One Hundred. But I’ll tell you — when I was choosing hymns,
I’ll tell you what we sang! I’ll bet you every time I had opportunity to choose
them, we sang those two Psalms! And this was at Granada Presbyterian down in
Coral Gables, Florida. I then went from there to the Independent Presbyterian
Church, and they had the old burgundy hymnal…some of you may be familiar with
that. It was actually, aside from a sort of liberal bias in the editing, which
hadn’t got too Politically Correctly Wacky at that point…they just didn’t like
things like worm…they edited out words like that… “Such a worm as
I.” They toned some of that down, but otherwise it’s a great hymnal. It had
sixty to seventy Psalm settings in it, and as soon as I began my ministry in
Savannah, I started putting as a line in the bulletin, “Psalter.” I identified
the hymn selections that were actually Psalm selections. I identified them as
such so that the people started getting used to the idea that they were singing
a Psalm. And I would always point it out: “This is Psalm 22, you know, set to
this tune.” And we would sing it, and they would realize that they were singing
Psalms.

I was pretty happy with that for a couple of years,
and then I went and visited Westminster Seminary in California and got in some
conversations with Dr. Godfrey and Joey Pipa, and we were talking about the
Psalms. I can’t remember what all we talked about, but I came away thinking,
“All right, enough of this trifling with having Psalms to sing. We need to have
an effort to actually produce a Psalter that churches can use.” And so I
personally overtured Central Georgia Presbytery, and the overture passed at
Central Georgia, and then that became Central Georgia’s overture to the General
Assembly, and that passed — that we set up a study commission.

The study commission did its work, came back and
recommended that a Psalter be produced. That passed. And, by the way, I’ve
always felt like the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and so when we had
the big vote at General Assembly on whether or not to produce the Trinity
Psalter
, I invested a little bit in printing a mini-Psalter that had — I
don’t know – ten or twelve selections. And we passed those out in General
Assembly, and rather than just start into a report defending–you know, giving
you all the reasons for why we ought to do this– instead we sang about half a
dozen Psalms, with a thousand male voices in assembly. It was very moving and
powerful, and everything just swept right through.

We had, of course, a couple of inane [laughter]
questions and comments from the oddest sources. One person stood up and said,
“If we go back to singing the Psalms we’ll be pulling the veil of Moses over the
face of the bride of Christ.” When I recovered from that one… [Laughter]…I
did have a couple of softballs thrown to me by sympathetic people who made it
possible to respond in turn, politely. And it overwhelmingly, if not
unanimously, passed. And the result was The Trinity Psalter, which you
have before you.

Now let me say a few things about how The Trinity
Psalter
was put together and what it is attempting to do. As a committee, we
looked at all of the available psalters — all the ones that we knew about — such
as The Scottish Psalter of 165; The Irish Psalter of 1880; The Psalter; The
1912 Psalter
— which is… the preponderance of the Psalm selections in
The Trinity Hymnal
and in “The Hymnbook” (the burgundy one), were from
The 1912 Psalter
. It really is poetically very, very good, I think. I think
it is the best in its poetic rendering even if it’s not as literal as The
Scottish Psalter
. There was The East Australian Psalter; The Complete
Book of Psalms for Singing; The Anglo-Genevan Psalter
… all of these had
certain liabilities. The Covenanter Psalter was the one that we thought
was the most useful, mainly because of metrical variety.

Now a number of you probably don’t even read music.
If you don’t, then you’re in the same boat as I am. For all the involvement I’ve
had in The Trinity Psalter, I can’t read a note, and so everything is by
ear and I try to listen carefully and pay attention as closely as I can, so part
of what I learned about is meter.

You know, you have tunes that are written in a
certain meter — that means a certain number of beats per…what?…whatever…per
stanza! So if you have the same meter, you can use the tunes interchangeably.
And The Scottish Psalter was all Common Meter, except for five. So you
could sing all 150 Psalms to Amazing Grace, and that was useful at a time
when people didn’t know very many tunes and they could just know one tune,
basically, and sing all 150 Psalms. But that can…try to “Common Meter” your way
four stanzas at a time through the Psalms! It can become very tedious, and it’s
limiting musically, and so in that respect The French PsalterThe
Anglo-Genevan
or The French Psalter…has a great advantage. It’s got
tremendous metrical variety, but the tunes, I think are very difficult. “The Old
One-Hundredth,” for example, is from that. That’s one of the better known. “The
Old One-Twenty-Fourth” (‘Now let Israel say…’) is one that you might recognize.
But many of them are difficult to sing…kind of irregular, and I didn’t think
that really was an alternative. But the principle of metrical variety is very
helpful. That means you can go and just plunder the hymnbook for all the good
tunes, and then if you’ve got significant metrical variety, you can start mixing
and matching tunes to go with words so that you can take the very best out of
the church’s treasury of tunes and combine them with Psalms. I found as well
that a number of the hymn tunes are actually Psalm tunes that the hymnal stole
from the psalters, so in some ways we were restoring stolen property when we
went and tried to reverse that trend!

So what The Trinity Psalter is, it takes the
500-page Book of Psalms for Singing, that is, the (are you with me?)
psalter of the RPCNA, that little four-thousand-member exclusive Psalm-singing
denomination. It has the musical score; it has multiple versions of many Psalms
— sometimes three and four versions. What we did is we said, “All right, let’s
get this thing down to where it’s cheap, thin, inexpensive, fits in the hymnal
rack alongside of the hymnal, because the PCA is a hymnal-using denomination.
It’s not exclusively Psalm-singing, so we need to have a practical product that
can be used alongside of the hymnal.” So we for the most part eliminated
multiple versions and said this one is the best one, we’re going to go with it.

They often broke up Psalms using many different
tunes. We said let’s get one tune and ideally we’ll get words and tunes
associated with each other. You know how hymns are often beloved because of the
tune, and the hymn is associated with the tune? Like Amazing Grace, or
you know…any number…Praise to the Lord! The Almighty. You want to have
that kind of close association of a tune with words, and for that to be
pervasive. That’s one reason why I’m eager that people try to stick with the
tunes that are in The Trinity Psalter, so that it becomes pervasive, so
that we all sing Psalm Twenty-Three to CRIMON.
We all know that, we all love that. We hear
CRIMON, we think Psalm Twenty-Three, and those words come to mind. I
think there’s something positive and healthy and worthwhile about making that
kind of association. So, unlike The Covenanter Psalter, we went with
The Geneva Psalter
ideal of one tune per Psalm, one setting per Psalm, so
that we have a much thinner book.

We also decided not to print music, in order to keep
it slim, but also because of another of my biases, which is that I think that
there is great value in seeing the message of the Psalm in paragraph form (or in
stanzas) rather than broken up by the music score. And it was interesting. Louis
Benson, who was the great American hymnologist at the turn of the century, had a
hand in The Presbyterian Hymnbook which was produced at that time. He
fought for having one line of words in the hymnbook, with all of the words
beneath…do you see what I’m saying? Not having all four stanzas in the musical
score, where you’re breaking it up and going up and down, but one stanza, and
then all the words underneath. He thought it was so important that you be able
to see and comprehend the message of the hymn, and breaking it up into the
musical score inhibited that. But he wanted most of the words underneath the
musical score. He lost that debate! And that’s not what we’ve done.

But I especially found this. When we first started
singing the Psalms — and I remember on Sanctity of Human Life Sunday we sang the
One-Hundred-Thirty-Ninth Psalm, and when we sang with it right there in stanzas
where it could be clearly seen,

“My inward parts were formed by
Thee;

within the womb Thou fashioned
me,

and I Thy praises will proclaim,

for strange and wondrous is my
frame.

My inward substance Thou did see,

the days that were ordained for
me

Were written in Thy book each
one,

When as then there was none.”

That was a powerful moment that I think might have escaped
the perspective of some if it hadn’t been sung in this form.

I don’t think this is the best. I think the best
would be to have the musical score with a line of the words within the musical
score, and the words beneath so that you would have music and words together.
But life’s full of compromises, and The Trinity Psalter is, you know, one
of those compromises, and hopefully a product that is going to be most
serviceable to the church.

So that’s why it looks as it does.

Most of the words are from The Book of Psalms for
Singing
, but we labored to find sources, and so you’ll find written
throughout this that it will refer to other psalters. As an example, Psalm Two
at the bottom says, ‘The Book of Psalms, 1871’… (That’s a great psalter,
by the way. It was produced by the old United Presbyterian Church, which at that
time was exclusively Psalm-singing) and The Psalter, which took the
1871
and revised it slightly. So it goes back to those two sources. If you
look at Psalm Three — ‘Based on Scottish Psalter.’ Some of them say
‘Elements from Scottish Psalter.’ And if you start adding it up, you’ll
find a significant portion of this is derived from the older psalters —
Scottish Psalter,
the 1871, the 1912, and then The Book of
Psalms for Singing, 1950
and 1973.

In addition, we did plunder the best that we could
find from The Irish Psalter and The Australian Psalter and some
others, and I list those on Page 8 for you, just so you’ll know where some of
the settings have come from. We altered a few of the settings, and most of the
tunes you’ll find in The Book of Psalms for Singing, as well as
three-quarters of them are in The Trinity Hymnal or the old Trinity
Hymnal
. All in all, then, we have a psalter that the tunes are fairly
familiar to hymnal-using PCA congregations. The words are words that are
historic, that are rooted in our Psalm-singing tradition, and have yet been
thoroughly reviewed and selected because they seem to be the optimum in terms of
alternatives for the comprehension of congregations today.

So, that said, I think that while there are things
that are lawful and may be done in a worship service, I think we always need to
remember that the decision to do that one thing is at the same time a decision
not to do another thing, and so as I’m going through picking hymns and things
that we’re going to sing, hymns and Psalms, I’m looking for the best thing…the
best thing to sing. All things considered, what’s going to be the best thing to
read in our Scripture reading? What’s going to be the best thing to sing when we
sing? We can’t sing everything. We can’t read the whole Bible. We have a finite
amount of time. What is the proper balance for each of the elements of worship?
How much reading, how much preaching, how much singing, how much praying? I
don’t want to cheat any one of the elements. You have a finite amount of time.
The decision to do one thing is at the same time a decision not to do another
thing, so that’s one of my assumptions.

Another is that my argument for traditional hymnody
is not an argument for all traditional hymns. I think that there are a lot of
things that are just flat un-singable, that are difficult, that are too distant
from us culturally, and we’re not going to get it; or, it’s going to take too
long, it’s going to be too hard. The argument for traditional hymnody is not an
argument for classical music. I think a lot of things that were written by Bach
and Handel should not be sung by congregations. They might be good for choirs. I
think a lot that Amy Grant sings should not be sung by congregations. They’re
too difficult. The rhythms are too irregular. They’re too hard to follow. As
David Hall was saying, you know, contemporary congregations don’t sing any more;
they moan, because it’s so difficult to follow other rhythms of so much of
contemporary music!

In “The Pastor’s Public Ministry” on Page 26, I have
some provisional criteria for deciding what to sing. To me the decision is not
when it was written. It’s not if the words are old, it’s not if the music’s been
around forever. The question, as Bill Wymond said last night, is “Is it good?”
Are the lyrics good lyrics? Well, then we’ll use them. Is the music good music?
(Good as defined by what? Well, there are criteria for deciding if music if
good.)

The science of esthetics has been around for about
2,500 years…at least since Plato there have been criteria that have been
discussed by all the major thinkers as to what makes beauty, beauty; and, what
makes the things that are ugly, ugly. So there are some criteria, and in the
worship service there are criteria for deciding what should be used and what
shouldn’t. And among the criteria that I ask in “The Pastor’s Public Ministry”
is, one, is it singable? Can a congregation sing it?

Two, is it biblically and theologically sound?

Three, is it biblically and theologically mature? We
could sing “Deep and Wide.” You know, there’s not a Bible verse prohibiting… you
know, God doesn’t say somewhere, ‘Thou shalt not sing ‘Deep and Wide.’ You could
do it, right? It’s biblical — or sort of. Right? Or “The B-I-B-L-E.” That’s
certainly biblical! [Laughter] But is it appropriate to a congregation
gathered for worship? Is it mature, as well as being biblically rich and full?

Fourth, is it emotionally balanced? Does the music
overwhelm the words, or is the music not suited to the words? You know different
music produces different kinds of responses. The John Phillip Sousa marches
would not be appropriate music for O Sacred Head, Now Wounded, would it?
Or The Beach Boys’ Fun, Fun, Fun [till her daddy took the T-Bird away]
would not work with Praise to the Lord! The Almighty, the King of
creation.

The group Glad likes to argue that music is
interchangeable in that way, but I don’t think so. Why did some of David’s music
soothe Saul? Not all music is soothing. Some of it’s very disorienting and
disruptive, and produces anxiety. Different music produces different responses.
Some is suited for worship, some is not. Some is suited…the words, the lyrics of
a given song and others are not. So there are criteria for deciding what should
be sung. The case for traditional hymnody is not a case for every traditional
hymn in every circumstance.

All right, here’s my argument. Look at your outline.
This is basically my argument for traditional worship: “Why Ought You to Prefer
Traditional Hymns?”

Number one, it’s because traditional hymnody is
God-centered. Follow the pronouns. Look at contemporary songs. It is amazing how
frequently the pronouns “I” and “me” appear in those songs. Whatever you say
about them, in the end it all ends up being about me, and not in the way the
Psalms are. The Psalms’ subjectivity always ends up having an objective
reference point. It is my subjectivity in light of God’s objectivity and who God
is. But it just seems that with so much of the contemporary stuff it all is
really about me, and with traditional hymnody it’s not. It’s all about God, and
that’s a good thing. That’s what worship is supposed to be. It’s supposed to be
about the praise and the worship of God, and confessing to God, and so forth.

Number two, they’re Bible-filled. David Wells has
run some of the numbers. I think that’s in The Case for Truth…but he’s
run some of the numbers. [That’s not the name of his book, is it? No Place
for Truth
! I’m talking about “the case”! This is the case for traditional
songs. Right! He talked about no place for truth.] He’s run some of the numbers,
like two-percent of all the contemporary songs in The Maranatha Songbook
deal with the theme of the church. In traditional hymnody, you know, it’s a
significantly higher percentage. The whole range of biblical and theological
themes are dealt with.

For example, we’ve been talking about the imputation
of Christ’s righteousness: “Jesus, Thy Blood…” [there is His passive
obedience] “…and righteousness”–you know, Count Zinzendorf’s great hymn that’s
in The Trinity Hymnal. But that’s just one of a half a dozen hymns that
talk about the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.

Any theological theme that you care to discuss
probably has a hymn in the hymnal. The hymnal is filled with Scripture. It has a
breadth of themes; it is rich in Scriptural content. I would urge you to follow
the trajectory from the Romantic era somewhere in the nineteenth century to the
present day, and measure biblical content in the worship services of the people
of God as you move from metrical psalmody to the didactic, theologically rich
hymns of the eighteenth century of Watts, and Wesley, and Doddridge, and
Toplady, into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and then into the
contemporary worship scene. Follow the trajectory in terms of biblical content
in what we sing, and you will see a sharp decline, with a drop-off as you come
to the present day. Look at the whole worship service and how much biblical
content is there in the singing of God’s people, and it has been a drastic
reduction. And I think that is an unmitigated disaster for God’s people! Faith
comes by hearing the word of Christ…sanctified by the truth…truth is evaporating
from our songs.

So, if it’s Bible-filled (third), it’s
gospel-focused (that I’ve just mentioned). You want to know about the imputation
of Christ’s righteousness? Sing a traditional hymn. Toplady’s hymns are…there’s
no greater hymn writer on the themes of Sola Gratia and Sola Fide,
Sola Christe
. They are gospel-rich, gospel-centered–gospel-driven, shall we
say?–in ways that contemporary songs just have not managed to be. So, they are
rich with Christ-focused content and work well with services that have in mind
moving from praise to confession, to the cross and assurance of forgiveness, to
thanksgiving for what Christ has done, and then leading on into the means of
grace.

Fourth, church-honoring. As I’ve mentioned, this is
a treasure of devotional expression. It is a treasure of musical composition. In
the hymnal you have music that was written by Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven,
Hayden, Mendelssohn — to name a few. You have lyrics that were written by
Ambrose, under whose preaching Augustine was converted and grew as a young
Christian. You have Gregory the Great. You have from the Middle Ages, St.
Francis of Assisi and Bernard of Clairvaux, to name two; Watts, Doddridge,
Toplady, Newton, and on into the present day.

You have great leaders, great theologians, and the
great poets of the Christian tradition writing the finest devotional expressions
that the church has possessed. It’s a treasure! It doesn’t have to do with when
things were written; it has to do with what we now have that is a gift of God to
us. Why would we neglect it? Why would we not expose our people to it? Why would
we choose to only use those things that have been produced in our own
generation? I think our generation will make some contributions.

I have to say, I don’t think the twentieth century
was a great century for hymn lyrics. Not every century has been equally
proficient at writing great devotional lyric. It just hasn’t been the case, and
I don’t think the twentieth century was particularly proficient. Maybe the
twenty-first century will do better. I reckon our generation will make its
contribution, and those contributions will work their way into the hymnody…into
the hymnal. The hymnal is a kind of canon to which each generation gains access
as its music and lyrics prove worthy by general acceptance in the church, and I
think the use of the hymnal honors that.

I think that PCA congregations ought to be using
Trinity
hymnals. This is what our leadership deems to be the best that’s
available by way of a devotional expression and musical excellence. This honors
the movement of the Holy Spirit over the last two thousand years in inspiring
the music and the lyrics of the church. This is the church’s tradition. This is
the church’s culture. This is not the music of my father’s generation; if it
were (I mentioned this last year, I think), Benny Goodman would be in here,
right? If it were my sister’s generation, we’d have some tunes that Elvis sang
in here, or something of that genre. This is not their book! This is the book of
the whole church, and when people get converted we introduce them to the
tradition. We expose them to the treasury. We initiate them into the richness of
devotional expression that God has given to the church, and to the musical
excellence that He has given to us as well.

So, the hymnal honors the church.

And then, fifthly, Spirit-dependent. That’s more of
an argument for traditional worship, but you know there are five or six major
prayers that are in a traditional worship service. The hymnody of the church
corresponds well with those prayers. As well, there are a number of hymns that
deal directly with the third Person of the Trinity — His praise, His work as the
one who applies redemption — and so the Holy Spirit is honored as well as we
express our dependence on the Spirit through use of the hymnal.

Implementation? Here’s what I recommend to you.
Study the hymnal. I just am amazed how many people reject the hymnal who have no
idea what’s in it, and I think that’s especially true for my generation down. I
think that for many, many pastors in the PCA, they got converted in college.
They went off to seminary and into the church. The only thing they know is what
they sang in small group studies. They have no idea what’s in the hymnal. Never
studied the hymnal. It’s almost willful and culpable ignorance, I would say. I
just urge you to study the hymnal. Get a pianist and work your way through every
hymn. Listen to the music, read the words. Learn the hymnal. Learn the genre of
the hymnal. Learn the history of the hymns and the uses of the hymns.

Third, I’d encourage a hymn or Psalm of the month,
and use it every week. Encourage their use in family devotions. And in the
attachment there, there’s a calendar for a ten-year period for use of Psalms and
hymns to introduce to your congregations.

Brief introductions — I think it helps. Very
brief introductions, in my opinion! A couple of lines to introduce a metrical
Psalm, to introduce a hymn. Just enough to stimulate interest. Not a
dissertation, just a short introduction to what’s being sung. It’s really helped
with the Psalms. Just to give a little context and explanation has helped very
much with our singing of metrical Psalms.

First Presbyterian…I don’t know if you’ve put them
on your website…but they have produced a lot of introductions, short
introductions. I commend them to you. [Are they at the website?] And we’re
working on…I’ve written a whole bunch of Psalm introductions. I gave you some of
those last year; I’m still working on them, but I think they help. They help to
cultivate an appreciation for the hymnal and the psalter.

Fifth, Hymns Triumphant and The Trinity
Psalter
CD’s. Hymns Triumphant, I think, still is the leader in its
class. You have two CD’s…72 outstanding hymns. If you really want people to
learn the genre, this is easy listening. This really is as responsible as
anything for teaching me the hymnal. I highly commend it to you. It’s an
outstanding production. Likewise The Trinity Psalter CD’s…sixty of the
Psalms are there. Between the two of these, that’s 132 Psalms and hymns that
people can be informally exposed to. Also, The Psalms of Scotland. And
all this is in the back and available to you. I strongly encourage your
encouraging the use of those.

Choral calls to worship. If you have a choir, the
choir can use the same call to worship for a month at a time. It’s good
exposure. Holy, Holy, Holy…if they don’t know Holy, Holy, Holy,
have the choir sing one stanza as a call to worship for a given month.

And then, teach a class on hymnody in the Sunday
School to further expose your people.

Turn the page… Pages 2, 3, and 4 are just an outline of
where we’re going. Let’s try to get some exposure to the hymnal itself and its
richness so that we’re not just talking in theory, but beginning to groom an
appreciation for what’s there.

Patristic Hymns

Let’s start with some patristic hymns from the time
of the Apostles to Gregory the Great. If you want to make checks, I’m going to
check the ones that I think that you really should begin to use. And when I say
“double check,” that means that you’re really…failing in your duty [laughter]
if you haven’t.

Okay. Under “Patristic Hymns”, No. 58 — O
Splendor of God’s Glory Bright
, written by Ambrose. Amazing! We’re using his
devotional language still, 1700 years later. That’s a one-checker. We just sang
Holy God, We Praise Your Name. That gets a double-check. If you have any
recognition of Trinity Sunday or preach on the Trinity, that last
stanza…beautiful, beautiful tune…beautiful words expressing the mystery of the
Trinity.

No. 162 (four down from there), Of the Father’s
Love Begotten
…Prudentius, 348-413 A.D. Drop down a couple more. Let All
Mortal Flesh Keep Silence,
from the fifth century. Drop down two…Welcome,
Happy Morning
, Fortunatus, from the sixth century. Drop down one more…420,
At the Lamb’s High Feast uses the tune ST.
GEORGE’S, WINDSOR. That’s from the sixth century.

Sing with the church of the fathers. You know Dr. Olds’
book, The Patristic Roots of Reformed Worship. These people are for the
most part our friends! They would appreciate what we do.

Medieval hymns…All Creatures of Our God and King,
double-check that one. St. Francis of Assisi. The Reformers liked Francis and
Bernard, by the way, so don’t be too frightened of all the Medieval monks.

Drop down two. O Come, O Come, Emmanuel…that
gets a double-check. Music from the twelfth century…words, rather, from the
twelfth century. Drop down two more from that. All Glory, Laud, and Honor,
Theodolph of Orleans, 820 B.C. Double-check, and we’ll sing 247, if you’ll turn
to that: O Sacred Head, Now Wounded…a great illustration of how the
hymnal is the treasury of the church. These are Bernard’s lyrics and Bach’s
music…247. Let’s sing the first stanza. [Group sings.]

Just remain standing…265, 266…Come Ye Faithful,
Raise the Strain
, John of Damascus, the eighth century. Check that. Check
the next one, The Day of Resurrection! uses the tune,
LANCASHIRE, also John of Damascus. No. 271
Sing, Choirs of New Jerusalem! You should recognize this tune. It was
the same or similar to the one we used last night. Let’s sing the first stanza.
It will just give you an idea of what I felt in Chapel at Trinity College…. [Group
sings.
]

Okay, you may be seated. No. 275, you want a check
there: The Strife is O’er, the Battle Won…Latin hymn; No. 289, A Hymn
of Glory Let Us Sing
, uses the same tune as All Creatures of Our God and
KingChrist Is Made the Sure Foundation
. That uses
REGENT SQUARE, very singable. Goes back to
the seventh century…also has an alternative tune that’s a lot more difficult,
but it’s a fine tune as well; 642, Be Thou My Vision. Let’s sing the
first stanza of 642. [Group sings.]

Turn a couple of pages to 645, Jesus, the Very
Thought of Thee
. The tune is ST. AGNES.
It goes back to the eleventh century, sometimes attributed to Bernard of
Clairvaux, as is the next one as well, Jesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts.
Here again, the richness of the devotional expression in these two hymns is
something of which you do not deprive yourself and your people. This comes right
out of the Middle Ages. This is our tradition as well. There was no per se
Roman Catholic Church. There was just the Western church, and there was a
breadth of theological understanding and conviction in that church that perhaps
embraces us. You’ll see much in these hymns with which you can identify. Don’t
deprive yourselves of this. So, 645…we’ll sing the first stanza. [Group
sings.
]

All right. Did I make it clear that double-checks
now (just for those who are keeping score) All Creatures of Our God and King;
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel; O Sacred Head, Now Wounded; Be Thou My Vision;
and
Jesus the Very Thought of Thee.
I just think you just have to use these at
least every year.

Reformation Hymns

Turn the page …. “Reformation…Second Reformation
Hymns.” Richard Baxter’s You Holy Angels Bright, check that; John Calvin,
168, I Greet Thee, Who My Sure Redeemer Art, check that. Drop down to
Paul Gerhardt (who had the good sense to translate O Sacred Head, Now Wounded
and to revive its use)…but 156 is quite usable: O Lord, How Shall I Meet You?

Let’s sing the first stanza of 217. I thank Scott
Reiber for introducing this hymn to me about fifteen years ago. Again, because
of the poverty of my background in hymns, I had no idea about this. I think it’s
one of the most beautiful in all the hymnal. Let’s sing the first stanza, and
then the sixth stanza, “Come, then, banish all your sadness….” First and
sixth. [Group sings.]

I’m just curious. For how many of you is that
new?… My word! All right! I feel like I’ve done a good day’s work if I just
convinced you that that is one to use every Christmas!

All right, drop down a few numbers to 609: Why
Should Cross and Trial Grieve Me?
uses that same tune; 669, Commit Now
All Your Griefs
, uses DIADEMATA
(Crown Him with Many Crowns)
. Those get checks….248, check that: Ah, Holy
Jesus, How Hast Thou Offended
…Johann Heermann. Martin Luther…we sang already
today, No. 92, A Mighty Fortress is Our God. Definitely a double-check,
Luther’s version of Psalm 46!

John Milton, regarded by some as the greatest epic
poet of the English language, wrote No. 33. I’m going to have you turn there.
We’re going to use…the tune is MONKLAND.
Why they dropped that tune from the blue Trinity and replaced it with
what they replaced it with in the red Trinity…this is one of those things
I have to say I don’t understand what they were thinking of. But anyway, 33, to
the tune MONKLAND.[Group sings.]
That’s Milton’s version, Psalm 136. You know, he wrote a number of poetic
versions of the Psalms. That was his skilled hand at work in the producing of
that hymn.

NEANDER,
you know…No. 53, that gets a double-check for sure: “Praise to the Lord,
the Almighty,
the King of creation.” Probably less well-known, No. 166.
Let’s sing two stanzas of it, Wondrous King, All-Glorious. Let’s stand
and sing this one. [Group sings.] All right, you may be seated.

Under Philipp Nicolai, 317, is Bach’s arrangement of
WACHET AUF, Wake, Awake, for Night Is
Flying
. Down a couple, Martin Rinkart, Now Thank We All Our God,
that’s a double-check. Every Thanksgiving season that should be sung. The next,
Johann Schutz, No. 4 in the hymnal, we already sang: All Praise to God, Who
Reigns Above
…just absolutely packed with Scripture, including that wonderful
stanza that clearly is alluding to I Kings 18: “The Lord, He is God! Yahweh
Elohim!
” [I still remember that from Hebrew!] Magnificent hymn.

Put a check by the next one, 198: Lift Up Your
Heads, Ye Mighty Gates!
To TRURO, a
very usable tune.

The Evangelical Awakenings and the Evangelical Hymns

Turn the pages to page 11. We come now to “The
Evangelical Awakenings and the Evangelical Hymns” beginning with Isaac Watts,
known as the father of English hymnody. He’s the father because up till then
everybody was singing metrical Psalms virtually exclusively…the Anglicans
included, as well as the Dissenters. The Anglicans don’t begin singing hymns
until the middle of the nineteenth century. They’re singing Psalms. Insofar as
they’re singing at all, they’re singing Psalms. So Isaac Watts can rightly claim
that title as the father of the English hymn, and I believe still today the
greatest of all of the English hymn writers. That’s not just my opinion. Hughes
Olds says the devotional quality of Watts’ hymns is unsurpassed. With Charles
Wesley, Olds says, he shares the honor of being the greatest hymnodist of
English-speaking Christendom. And I still think they deserve the title. I don’t
think they’ve been surpassed; not because they wrote 300 years ago, but because
of the quality of it. There are certain eras that excel at certain things. I
don’t know who would excel the political writings of the American founding
fathers, even though it’s old stuff. It’s the quality, it’s not when and who.
It’s not what race, it’s not what ethnic group; it has to do with the quality of
it. And Watts is unsurpassed.

Page 11, The new Trinity numbers are the
numbers in the middle now, so don’t get confused…try not to. But I would put
double checks by When I Survey the Wondrous Cross, third one down; the
next one, Alas, and Did My Savior Bleed? Just great Christ-centered,
cross-centered hymns. The next one, How Sweet and Awful Is the Place
is the way Watts wrote it. They Valley-girled it in the red Trinity! [Laughter]
But I double-check that…highly, highly recommend it to you. Drop down about
five, Come, We That Love the Lord. That’s No. 700. To the end of that
category, How Bright These Glorious…that’s No. 544. I’d give that a
check. Turn to No. 176 in the hymnal: Not All the Blood of Beasts. Let’s
sing two stanzas of that. I suspect that this is not that well known, but it’s
a…oh, yeah, I see. I did get confused…242…242,
FESTAL SONG. [Group sings.] Christ’s death as atoning sacrifice
very clearly stated in that hymn.

Turn the page. Top of page 12, hymn No. 340,
Come, Dearest Lord
, give that a check. Skip down to….I’m Not Ashamed
does not have a good tune, I don’t think, in the Trinity. AZMON
was used in the old burgundy hymnbook, and that’s what I prefer to use. Or
BELMONT also is a good tune.

Divine and Moral Songs for Children

Next classification, 1715, has “Divine and Moral Songs for
Children.” Let’s sing No. 119. As we do, note that 119, I Sing the Almighty
Power of God
, looks like a song and note that it was written for children. [Group
sings.
] Now is there a clearer sign that Christendom is in sharp decline
than if Watts is writing that for children?

Issac Watts and the Eighteenth Century

All right. Next, “The Songs of David Imitated.”
These are Watts’ Psalms. To tell you the truth, I would be content if that’s all
we ever used, Watts’ “Songs of David Imitated.” They are so outstanding. I know
he’s been criticized, and he was a bit arrogant maybe in speaking of the
metrical Psalms as pulling the veil of Moses over the eyes of the saints, but
let’s forgive him for that and recognize that these are brilliant,
Christ-centered interpretations of the Psalms, paraphrases of the Psalms. We
won’t necessarily sing any of them, but let me just have you check some off. The
first one then, which is No. 7, From All That Dwell Below the Skies,
that’s Psalm 117; go down two, and double-check Our God, Our Help in Ages
Past
. That’s his version of Psalm 90, one of the great hymns of the church.
Go down two more, Before Jehovah’s Awful Throne, that’s his Psalm 100 to
PARK STREET…great hymn. Go down several
more to O Bless the Lord, My Soul from The Genevan
Psalter.
Drop down a few more. Double check Joy to the World. That’s
his Psalm 98. If you see the whole text, you’ll get it. It really does follow
Psalm 98 very closely. One of the great hymns, and again an example of the
treasury, ANTIOCH. That’s
attributed to Handel, arranged by Lowell Mason, words by Isaac Watts. It just
doesn’t get any better than that! That’s the treasure that we have in the
hymnal.

Drop down a few more. Let Children Hear is
Psalm 78 to the tune DUNDEE. Check that.
Check the one after it, Lord of the Worlds Above. That’s his Psalm 84, to
DARWALL. Drop down three more and
double-check Jesus Shall Reign. I think that’s the greatest of all
missionary hymns. That’s Watts’ version of Psalm 72, sung to
DUKE STREET. (That’s the only tune to sing
it to!) [Laughter] Drop down one more, his version of Psalm 51, O
Thou That Hears When…
that’s No. 45 in the new Trinity, to the tune
HAMBURG. You know that as When I Survey
the Wondrous Cross.
That’s a great setting, a great rendering of Psalm 51,
and should be used.

All right, turn the page. I reckon Watts wrote at
least six of the greatest hymns ever written, and you ought to use them every
year. Charles Wesley, the sweet singer of Methodism, arranged these a little
differently. The famous ones, every one of them has a check. Every one of them.
The ones that get double checks: O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing; Ye
Servants of God, Your Master Proclaim
, sung to either
LYONS or
HANOVER; Come, Thou Long-Expected Jesus should be sung at the
beginning of the Christmas season each year; Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,
music by Mendelssohn, words by Charles Wesley — it’s just amazing, isn’t it?
It’s a wonderful thing that we have in this collection.

The next, Jesus Christ Is Risen Today
to
GWALCHMAI— it’s a Welsh tune. I dare not say it, or he’ll mock me
afterwards, but it looks like LLANFAIR or
something like that. It’s a wonderful hymn. The next one, Christ the Lord Is
Risen Today
. Virtually everybody uses that every Easter Sunday. It should
be. That’s a double-check if there ever was one. And who’s responsible for the
music? Is it attributed? No. Okay.

Rejoice, the Lord Is King gets a
double-check, to DARWALL. At the bottom of
page 14, you can single-check Lo! He Comes with Clouds Descending, but
I’ve heard an arrangement of it with the tune
HELMSLEY that makes it a double-check, if we can ever get it universally
accepted and used. It is absolutely perfect…match of words and music.

Jesus, Lover of My Soul,
to ABERYSTWYTH. That’s a double-check. You
just have to sing that hymn. The next one, Love Divine, All Loves Excelling,
is a double-check. Soldiers of Christ, Arise, one check. And Can
It Be?
And I’m going to insist that we sing the last stanza of 455. What a
great gospel hymn! And again, they goo-gooed down the red Trinity where
you were pleading, “Amazing love! How can it be?” That’s not the way you’re
supposed to do it! Do it

A cappella? Yes! But instead of repeating “Amazing
love,” what you repeat is “Bold, I approach the eternal throne, and claim the
crown through Christ, my own.” The refrain is the last line. You don’t go back
to the last line of the first stanza, you use the last line of the last stanza.

Are you with me? I see a lot of
blank stares…..All right, let’s stand and sing “No condemnation….” [Group
sings
] You can be seated!

I just don’t think there is any
hymn that better expresses the heart of the saved saint and the sheer joy of it
as does And Can It Be?

All right, turn the page. Philip Doddridge,
another of the evangelical hymn writers of the eighteenth century…turn to No.
390 in the hymnal, Lord of the Sabbath, Hear Us Pray. Doddridge’s hymns
virtually always end up with you gazing to heaven and setting your hope there. [Group
sings
]

Speak about legalistic view of
the Sabbath… let’s sing a cappella the sixth stanza, and it expresses how
the Sabbath encourages us to anticipate the eternal Sabbath in heaven, our
eternal rest. [Group sings]

Now, if you’ll move down about five to
Awake, My Soul! Stretch Every Nerve
. That’s a very fine hymn, No. 576 in the
hymnal. Give it a check. The one after that, 498, is not in the hymnal, O God
of Bethel
. The interesting thing is it’s almost always on the old list.
Previous generations loved that hymn, and I don’t know what’s happened to it.
It’s just dropped off somehow. The next one, How Gentle God’s Commands,
to the tune DENNIS, Blest Be the Tie
That Binds
. Give that a check, and then double-check the last one, Great
God, We Sing That Mighty Hand
is not in the red Trinity. It’s another
one of those inexplicable deletions to me. It’s a great new year hymn to a great
tune. It’s just magnificent! I don’t know what happened, but it somehow got
lost. [Laughter]

There’s a number of things that
are inexplicable. El Shaddai is one of them! If you want an object lesson
in music that doesn’t fit words, that would be it! All right, enough of that.

Page 17, TOPLADY.
One of the Calvinists within the Church of England, a severe critic of John
Wesley, whom he called Pope John, TOPLADY
is really…no one speaks more of God’s grace…justification by faith alone, by
grace alone, by Christ alone, than did he. Put a check by No. 95, which is 470
in the New Trinity.

Let’s sing No. 463, which I
suspect some of us will not know, A Debtor to Mercy Alone. Great Welsh
tune. Let’s try to sing the first and last stanzas. [Group sings] Hold
it. “My Savior’s…” what? [“Obedience and blood”] There’s the active and the
passive. The imputation of Christ’s righteousness, His obedience to the Law, and
His death on the cross. Let’s sing the last stanza. [Group sings]

Drop down about five, double-check Rock of
Ages, Cleft for Me
, whatever tune you use. That’s 499; 519, Fountain of
Never-ceasing Grace
, another great hymn of justification by faith. It should
be used. Give that a check.

Turn the page to John Newton, former
slave-trader, the one involved in the slave trade…became a Christian, and a
Christian minister. We sang this morning Let Us Love and Sing and Wonder.
I think that’s one of the greatest hymns ever written. We were going to sing it,
but we already did! The one above it, Though Troubles Assail Us to the
tune JOANNA, very usable.

Drop down four. Glorious Things of Thee are
Spoken,
double-check that. That should be used every year. Right below it,
Now May He Who From the Dead, to the tune
MERCY, that gets one check. Drop down three more to Amazing Grace!
You think that’s one or two checks? Three checks! Drop down four more, Come,
My Soul, Thy Suit Prepare
, great hymn on the subject of prayer. Give that a
check, then below that, How Sweet the Name of Jesus Sounds in the
believer’s ear, that gets a check.

Across the page, William Cowper,
a member of Newton’s church and one who struggled a great deal with depression,
and who tried to even kill himself several times. And yet, Chesterton, who
wrote the book Orthodoxy regards him as one of the great poets of the
English language. Did he call him “the greatest lyric poet of the English
language?” His hymns, as you saw this morning as we sang the first of those,
God Moves in a Mysterious Way
, a superb statement of providence and frowning
providences, and our interpreting and understanding of them. That ought to be
sung.

The next one, There Is a Fountain Filled
with Blood
, certainly. The next after that, The Spirit Breathes Upon the
Word
, to the tune BELMONT, as
it is in the New Trinity. Very good; 262 from the old hymnbook was not
used in the New Trinity for some reason. But if you’ll flip the page,
we’re going to sing a stanza because I love it so much! As we sang this in
England, again, Scripture rich. Play it good and loud so they can hear it.
Everybody know this tune,

ST. BEES? [Group
sings
]

All right, page 23, Joseph Addison’s The
Spacious Firmament on High.
Joseph Addison…we will sing that. That’s on page
117, unless I’m continuing to confuse myself with my numbers. Sing the first
stanza. This is Addison’s version of Psalm 19. [Group sings] All right,
remain standing. That’s a double-checker.

Joseph Hart, No. 472 [Come, Ye Sinners, Poor
and Wretched
] in your hymnals, a difficult Welsh tune, but I think much
repays the effort to learn it. [Group sings] William Williams, converted
under the ministry of Howell Harris during The Great Awakening, contributed No.
598, Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah. I know you all know that. Next, John
Cennick, like Williams, converted during The Great Awakening, Lo! He Comes
with Clouds Descending
, though not to the tunes — I don’t think — not to the
tunes in the Trinity. HELMSLEY!
You must find HELMSLEY and use
HELMSLEY.

Thomas Oliver, converted through Whitefield’s
preaching in Bristol, The God of Abraham Praise,
LEONI, the tune. That’s a double-checker,
by the way, as was Guide Me, O Thou Great Jehovah. That tune is rooted
somewhere in the Hebrew tradition. Who knows how far back it goes? The next
page, turn to No. 297, All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name. That should be
sung every year, that’s a double-check, and we’ll sing that first stanza
together. Go ahead and stand for that. Standing and sitting is helping you to
stay awake, so 297 to DIADEM. [Group
sings
] You may be seated.

Page 25-26 is my attempt to contextualize. I
gave you a “Top 40 of the Eighteenth Century.”

The Hymnody of the Early Nineteenth Century

Turn to page 29, “The Hymnody of
the Early Nineteenth Century.” With the Romantic movement, Christian hymnody
begins to change. It makes more of an overt appeal to the senses, to the
emotions; it makes reference to idealized and romanticized images from nature
and from the past
: It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, that would be a
good example, you know. It didn’t just come one night! When Morning Gilds the
Skies
…so you have this kind of a much looser poetic expression — some would
argue superior poetic expression. You’re not just getting rhymed theology as you
did in the eighteenth century, you’re getting now a much more poetic license and
this appeal…. “…The virgin sings her lullaby”–that’s a romanticized image that
doesn’t come from the Bible, but it’s a romanticized view of the past and of
motherhood, and you’re going to find more and more of that creeping into our
hymnody.

James Montgomery, I’ve not double-checked any
of them, but there are a number of good ones. The second one, Angels, from
the Realms of GloryHail to the Lord’s Anointed
to
AURELIA; the next one, Spirit of the
Living God
, to WINCHESTER NEW. Drop
down about five to According to Thy Gracious Word, but the Christian
Reformed Church uses the tune MERTON, and
that’s a wonderful tune with that hymn.

The next, Shepherd of Souls, Refresh and Bless,
to ST. AGNES, which we sang earlier.
Lift Up Your Heads to
ALL SAINTS NEW
is an outstanding hymn. In the Hour of Trial, another one to check.

And then, Call Jehovah Thy
Salvation
to
HYFRODOL, that’s Montgomery’s view
of Psalm 91. If you can combine those two, that, I think, should be used every
year. Page 31, Reginald Heber, Holy, Holy, Holy we sang earlier today.
That’s a double-check. And 405, God, That Madest Earth and Heaven. Let’s
sing one stanza of that. Most of you perhaps know…

[Group sings.] Now for how many of you was that
new? Isn’t it a beautiful melody? It’s another Welsh tune; I highly commend it
to you. The last two for Heber should also get checks: From Greenland’s Icy
Mountains; The Son of God Goes Forth to War.

Turn the page. Thomas Kelley. The second,
The Head That Once Was Crowned with Thorns
to
ST. MAGNUS, gets a check, and then drop down five to Who is This That
Comes from Edom
? It fell right out of the red Trinity, again for
inexplicable reasons, but that is a great hymn to a great tune. I would
double-check that. I love that hymn, and I love the tune to that hymn. And yet
it vanished. If you have the blue Trinity’s or can get permission to
photocopy, I would use it.

Horatius Bonar. We come to virtually the first
great Presbyterian hymn writer. Presbyterians are singing Psalms, but he’s
written a number of them that I think should be used frequently. Drop down to
the fourth of those, No. 304, I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say. Let’s sing
the first stanza of 304. [Group sings.] One thing I love about that hymn
is when you respond in “I came to Jesus…” it shifts to major key there. Did you
catch it? It’s minor key when he’s hearing the voice of Jesus, but when he
responds it shifts to a major key, which seems to me singularly appropriate.

Turn to 378, his wonderful communion hymn,
Here, O My Lord, I See Thee Face to Face
. It gets a double-check. [Group
sings.
]

The richness of the sacramental piety in that
hymn is a thing to be pondered. I just recently read the book, Holy Fairs,
by Schmidt, and it makes the point that I think I had missed — maybe you missed
it as well. But the matter of the importance of the sacraments should not be
confused with frequency of observation…or observance, I should say.

The sacrament of the Lord’s Supper played a
central, unparalleled role in Scottish Presbyterianism for over 200 years with
the sacramental seasons that were the forerunners of our revivals in this
country. And that book, Holy Fairs, powerfully makes the point. If you
were dealing with God as a Scottish Presbyterian, it would be at the Table. You
are baptized, you’re going to get confirmed at that Table. You’re unbaptized and
unconverted, it’s going to be the privilege of the Table that’s going to mark
your conversion. If you’re backslidden, you’re going to get right with God at
the Table. You’re faithful, you reaffirm the covenant at the Table. And that was
the place, more than…what I’m saying is it had a central role, and the high view
of the sacrament found in this hymn is not atypical at all. It’s rather
expressive of that whole tradition of sacramental piety in Scottish and American
Presbyterianism.

All right. Next, No. 461. We’ll sing one stanza
of Not What My Hands Have Done. This is another just outstanding
statement of faith alone, grace alone, Christ alone. Verse after verse… “Not
what my hands…Thy work alone…Thy grace alone…I bless the Christ…I praise the God
of grace.”HoHoly Let’s sing the first
stanza. [Group sings.] For how many of you was that new? Not as
many…good. At the bottom, go up three…A Few More Years Shall Roll, to the
same tune as a wonderful New Year hymn.

On the next page, 34, Frances Riddley Havergal
wrote a number of outstanding hymns. The second one, 293 in your hymnal,
Golden Harps are Sounding;
then drop down five, Who is On the Lord’s
Side?
Let’s turn to No. 588 and stand and sing the first stanza. [Group
sings.
] We did that so poorly, as compared to how wonderful that hymn is,
that we’re going to sing the last stanza again, and we’re going to pick up the
pace, though. Let’s really pick up the pace quite a bit. [Group sings.]
Remain standing and turn back a page to…forward a page, it’s 699, Like a
River Glorious
. [Group sings.] Okay, you may be seated. Havergal
probably slips into a little bit of “higher-life-ism” in that hymn, but I’m
willing to overlook it, the third stanza is so good.

Page 35, the high church movement got into the
act. It couldn’t allow just evangelicals to write hymns, and so John Mason Neale
really did the whole church a real favor by resurrecting so many of those older
medieval and patristic church hymns that we sang earlier. Frederick Faber would
be another.

Cecil Frances Alexander. Most of her hymns were
written as illustrations of The Apostles’ Creed. She took a doctrine and
wrote a hymn for it from out of the Creed for children. The second one down,
There is a Green Hill Far Away
is one of those. The second from the bottom,
Once in Royal David’s City…we often use that at Christmastime. William
Whiting’s Eternal Father, Strong to Save — you all do know that, don’t
you? That’s the Navy hymn. I think that should be sung every year…great hymn.
Sir Henry Baker’s The King of Love My Shepherd Is, that’s a beautiful
hymn. Matthew Bridges, next down, Crown Him with Many Crowns. That’s
every year. That’s a double-check. For the Beauty of the Earth, by
Pierpointe, I would use that. That gets one check. Onward, Christian Soldiers
gets one check. William Howe, O Word of God Incarnate gets one check,
but For All the Saints gets two. And I think we’re going to sing that
before we leave this Conference. After that, 394, This Day at Thy Creating
Word
to WINCHESTER NEW is good.

Across the page, John Ellerton. Three songs
down, Savior, Again to Thy Dear Name to
ELLERS is a good hymn. The Day Thou Gavest, Lord, is Ended…that’s
407. That gets a check. And Shine Thou Upon Us, one from the bottom to
LEONI, that gets one.

Edward H. Bickersteth, his third hymn, ‘Till
He Come!
O Let the Words to REDHEAD
is a good hymn.

Catherine Winkworth, third hymn, Whate’er My
God Ordains is Right
should be sung. That’s a double-check. That is a great
hymn for a Presbyterian especially.

Turn the page. “Hymns of the Twentieth
Century.” With words and tunes, I’m down to this: Margaret Clarkson, O
Father, You are Sovereign
to ST. THEODOLPH;
We Come, O Christ, to You to DARWALL
— those two.

Timothy Dudley Smith, Tell Out My Soul.
That’s Mary’s Magnificat…that’s his second.

Under “Others” — double checks by Great Is
Thy Faithfulness
and How Great Thou Art. And then all the others I
would give a single check.

And we’ll close with No. 660, which I suspect
some of us will not know, but is a gorgeous hymn. Let’s sing the first stanza of
No. 660. [Group singsO God Beyond All Praising’]

That concludes my presentation.

caret-downclosedown-arrowenvelopefacebook-squarehamburgerinstagram-squarelinkedin-squarepausephoneplayprocesssearchtwitter-squarevimeo-square